Louvered pre-cleaner separators have long been known in the art. They provide an effective filtering means which does not require periodic replacement. To improve the performance of such devices, it is desirable to provide a flange to the louver which will assist the filtered air passing through the louver to reverse direction toward the flow of pre-cleaned air. The flange helps to redirect this flow. Such a device is shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,190,058 issued to Farr et al. Unfortunately, such a structure can be expensive to manufacture since each louvered section must be independently fabricated and then assembled. Furthermore certain blade constructions cannot be fabricated by injection molding because of their geometry. It would be desirable to produce a louvered pre-cleaner which had a redirecting flange which could be manufactured by injecting molding or the like permitting fabrication of the entire filter in one or two steps regardless of the number of louvered sections.
The present invention has overcome problems relating to non-unitary fabrication, thereby substantially increasing the practicability of louvered filters by reducing the cost of manufacture. Furthermore, the present invention optimizes the louvered construction to achieve superior performance while maintaining the advantages of high speed fabrication.